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> The domain ... has been suspended due to its blacklisting on Google Safe Browsing Et voilà ... ! this is precisely the slippery slope I warned about a decad
by AshamedCaptain 8mo ago
> The domain ... has been suspended due to its blacklisting on Google Safe Browsing
Et voilà ... ! this is precisely the slippery slope I warned about a decade ago. The indirect censorship becomes direct censorship, defeating all the arguments about the morality of such a list. And:
> Not adding the domain to Google Search Console immediately. I don't need their analytics and wasn't really planning on having any content on the domain, so I thought, why bother? Big, big mistake.
Yet more monopolistic power to Google.
- dizhn 8mo agoThat is the bit that jumped at me immediately too. Why would a registrar take it upon itself to suspend a domain that another entity entirely blacklisted as part of their own completely opaque process? Who is Google? God? On the flip side of the coin I cannot get a site removed that is a blatant rip off of one of our websites being actively used for invoice redirection fraud.
- avaer 8mo agoIt's like being unable to get a passport because Microsoft has you on The List, and Microsoft needs to see your passport to check why you're on the list. Considering that getting a domain is a normal part of business these days, this kind of thing should be illegal. Not to mention, why does Google have any say in this?
- riddlemethat 8mo agoYou know it's getting bad out there when corporations act like the government.
- dizhn 8mo agoIt's like the domain registrar is acting like a vassal state. I don't think Google actually has any say in their decision.
- rustyhancock 8mo agoWell until a human can verify. Which likely is slow without a poke it's reasonable to base the decision on whats available. That's just how reputation works.
- dizhn 8mo agoIt doesn't sound reasonable to me at all. Why would we think that the reasons google blacklists a domain would align perfectly with reasons a domain name would be suspended? In the end they don't seem to agree already since the domain was unsuspended. Who knows why it was blacklisted by google? Even the decision to unsuspend it looks arbitrary.
- redeeman 8mo agoand anyone that trusts googles judgement here clearly needs a reputation of their own
- bandrami 8mo ago> Why would a registrar take it upon itself to Because keeping Google happy or at least not bothered is an existential priority for registrars
- dizhn 8mo agoI am suspecting something like this too but what is the mechanism by which Google would have influence on the registrar? As far as they are concerned the domain is gone from their index.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- otterley 8mo agoGoogle’s allowed to have an opinion. But that doesn’t mean that the registrar should be suspending the domain immediately in response. These two mechanisms should be decoupled.
- account42 8mo agoGoogle should not be allowed to make libelous statements without consequences.
- otterley 8mo ago(IAAL but this is not legal advice.) It’s not libel. Defamation requires a false statement of fact. Marking a website as “unsafe” is an opinion.
- ThunderSizzle 8mo agoGoogle is stating in a position of authority. It's therefore being stated as at least a professional opinion with the equivalent weight of fact, or representing facts. If the opinion is meant to be just another opinion, then it shouldn't cause any blacklisting of any sorts anywhere.
- account42 8mo agoNot to mention that the whole point of the list is for blocking in e.g. web browsers. Claiming it is just an opinion would be like a mobster claiming they didn't actually order a hit.
- otterley 8mo ago> If the opinion is meant to be just another opinion, then it shouldn't cause any blacklisting of any sorts anywhere. I agree with this! The registrar should not have triggered a suspension because of this. They're not obligated to, and the two processes should be decoupled.
- 8mo ago
- _2d30 8mo agoHow was this Google’s fault? Seems clearly like Radix’s fault.
- account42 8mo agoIt's both's fault. Google for making false and clearly damaging statements (libel) and Radix for acting on them.
- otterley 8mo ago(IAAL but this is not legal advice.) It’s not libel. Defamation requires a false statement of fact. Marking a website as “unsafe” is an opinion.
- ThunderSizzle 8mo agoIt's being stated as fact, not as an opinion.
- jolmg 8mo ago(IANAL) It's not about how it's stated, but whether it can be objectively proven to be true or false. "unsafe" refers to the likelihood of something bad happening in the future. You can't prove that something bad will happen in the future, so it's opinion.
- saghm 8mo agoAlso not a lawyer, but that makes intuitive sense. If I say "that food tastes bad", it's phrased as a fact, but a "reasonable person" (which is in fact a legal test used for some things, although I admit I'm not sure about libel) knows that there's an implicit "...to me" qualifier because the concept of taste itself is inherently subjective. My instinct is that while there are some things everyone would agree on as unsafe, it pretty quickly turns into a judgment call, and it probably makes sense to allow even ill-informed opinions that are made in good faith rather than malice or negligence. The question then becomes whether there's sufficient evidence to conclude something like that, and while the bar is lower for a libel claim than something criminal, it's still not obvious this would be provable here.
- jeroenhd 8mo agoThis is 100% on Radix, not on Google. Google and Microsoft can (and probably should) have a registry of known-abusive websites. False positives are inevitable, so these should be taken with a grain of salt, but in most cases they're correct. Their lists are a lot more reliable than those from the "traditional" antivirus/anti-scam vendors that will list anything remotely strange to pump up their numbers. The external people treating these lists as absolute truths and automatically taking domains down are the ones at fault here. Google didn't grab power, Radix gave it to them without asking.
- lazide 8mo agoWhat is to stop Google et. al. from also adding a lot of excess domains to pump up there numbers? What is to stop everyone from doing this blacklisting?
- phoric 8mo agoGoogle wants you to use it. If it blacklists excess domains that hold legitimate sites, their product gets worse. If they blacklist illegitimate sites, their product gets better.
- lazide 8mo agoSame as for those antiviruses.
- cwnyth 8mo agoThis argument would hold more weight if Google didn't have a history of making their own products worse and then getting rid of them.
- zenapollo 8mo agoCute. That is the commenter’s whole point about monopolies. Google is on record making their product worse to squeeze revenue. We’ve been living in the enshitification economy.
- 8mo ago
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- the_arun 8mo agoShould domain name matter? Or this applicable to any domain?
- TiredOfLife 8mo agoWhere did you do the warning?
- RockRobotRock 8mo agoThat's like a business being dissolved because it got a bad rating from BBB. Absolutely insane.